Coherent and synchronized ultradian rhythms in the locomotor activity of visually isolated adult female Japanese quail

GUZMAN D. A.; FLESIA, A. G.; AON, M. A.; PELLEGRINI S.; MARIN R. H.

Louisville

Congreso; 2015 Poultry Science Association Annual Meeting; 2015

Quail coveys are characterized by successive cycles of active phases(moving, foraging, observing) alternating with rest phases (resting, preening),presenting ultradian (<24h) rhythms. The temporal organizationactivity of groups of poultry chicks not only has been shown to presentboth circadian (24 h) and ultradian rhythms with periods ≤80 min, but alsosynchronization of activity among chicks within the group. However, individualadult Japanese quail seem to exhibit greater inter-individual variabilityin ultradian compared with circadian behavioral rhythms, which couldbe in part due to methodological limitations, given that ultradian rhythmscan be difficult to detect in behavioral time series at an individual level.This study focuses on whether synchronized ultradian rhythms can occuralong several days when adult individuals are visually isolated. Herein, westudy high resolution locomotor time series of 24 Japanese quails sampledevery 0.5s in a home-cage environment during 6.5 d. Applying an array ofmethods, including autograms, power spectra, autocorrelation, Enright?speriodogram, and wavelet analyses, we show that circadian as well asultradian rhythms with periods of a fraction of the circadian cycle (12, 8,6, 4.8, 4, 3, 2.4, 2 h and lower) were found in all locomotor time seriesanalyzed. In addition, these ultradian rhythms were fully organized in acoherent and synchronous way in all birds studied even though they werevisually isolated from conspecifics. To our knowledge, this is the first timethat long ultradian rhythms (≥2h) are shown to be also present in poultrybehavior, and that physical and visual contact between birds is not necessaryfor rhythm synchronization. Hence, our results support the contentionthat ultradian rhythms could be generated by an endogenous oscillator.Improving our knowledge on ultradian rhythms and for example whethera particular behavior is more probable to occur at a given time interval thananother can have applied relevance for improving management practices.